Webinar: Natural History at Home – At Home in a Habitat
Aired September 5, 2020
Gale:
Good morning everyone. Welcome to today's Natural History at Home program. My name is Gale.
Katie:
And I'm Katie.
Gale:
And we are educators at the National Museum of Natural History. I know that there was a little bit of issues with the Zoom link this morning. We apologize for that, we are so sorry that those of you that have registered for the program have had an expired link. We have since sent an email out that has the current link, so hopefully you guys are able to join us still. We understand that is it is already seven minutes into the program, so we will try to give you a whole program. So I hope you guys will stay with us. So we will wait probably a minute or so just to let people check their emails, get online, and join us. But we're so happy that you are here to join us today. We have had a little bit of a summer break, and so we're glad to be back online joining you for some family programs. And just to let you know, Katie and I are going to be bringing you these programs while the museum is closed. And so I am bringing you this program from my apartment in Washington, D.C.
Katie:
And I am in Alexandria, Virginia.
Gale:
And so for those of you that know where the Q and A button is, we're going to be chatting with you and asking you questions. And you can send us things too through the Q and A. And so let's go ahead while we're waiting for others to join us, let's warm up that Q and A button and let us know where you're from and let us know how old you are and we will say hello. We're really excited about today's program too, because we have a special guest expert, Ingrid Rochon. She is one of our colleagues from the National Museum of Natural History. She works in the Mammals department and she's going to be talking to us about a really, really cool, unique animal.
Katie:
And Gale, we've got some friends joining us. They're coming in now. We have James from, he's five from West Sacramento, California, hello James. Jessica in Chicago; I'm originally from Indiana, right next door neighbor. Ben in Baltimore. Tessa, hello in Connecticut. And hello Christian's family and thank you for your help with our link. Woo. Awesome. And Gary and Bridget from Indy, That's where I grew up. Wow. Welcome, Welcome.
Gale:
Hi, Aldona from Chicago. Great. We're so happy that you guys can join us today. I'm so happy to see that it's families and not just little kids. We have some, oh, we have Lucas and Stella from North Carolina, hi. All right. Yeah, so we're so glad that people are finding the link and able to join us. So before we begin, I do want to give a special thanks to our generous donors, volunteers, and other important partners who enable us to discover, create, and share new knowledge with the world today and every day free of charge. Thank you for that.
Katie:
All right, and so before we begin, I want to give a sneak peek of some dates that we have coming up in the near future for some programs, so let me share this real quick. We have other programs happening on Saturdays in English, and then we have a program in Spanish starting in just a couple weeks, one Sunday a month. Our November date is still to be determined, but expect one in November as well. So keep your eye out on that and please be sure to check the family program's website in order to register and join us for some more programs.
Gale:
And we promise that we'll have the correct link this time.
Katie:
And that brings us to today's program, which is all about habitats. But first, what is a habitat? A habitat is a place where a living thing lives. So when I use the word habitat, I'm talking about places like a forest, or the ocean, a place where you'd find things or where they live. We are going to learn together how the habitat provides a safe and healthy home for the living things that are in it. And we're going to focus specifically on animals. We are going to practice using our close-looking skills to learn about one specific, really unique animal, but we'll reveal that animal in just a few minutes.
Gale:
Right, and like I mentioned before, we have a really special guest expert here to join us today, Ingrid Rochon. She's our colleague at the National Museum of Natural History and she works in the Mammal division. And so we're really excited to invite her in a few minutes. And one thing that's going to be really important as we listen to Ingrid and discover things with her, it's going to be really important to use those close-looking skills that Katie mentioned because what we notice is going to help us with our craft that we're going to create together. We are going to be doing a mini-habitat exhibit together. So Katie and Ingrid and I are going to show you how to do that.
And so here's an example of mine. Katie has one too. You'll see that they're different. So you could use your creativity interpretation to create your habitat. So while we wait for more people to join, please make sure that you have the following supplies for your craft activity. You'll need two types of paper, regular paper like printer paper, and then a piece of thicker paper, like card stock or construction paper. You'll also need scissors, tape or a stapler, something to put that exhibit together. A ruler, a pencil, and other coloring and art supplies that you want to use to decorate your habitat.
Katie:
All right, so before we get into our program, let me go over a few quick logistical things to help you navigate through today's program. First, today's program is designed to last around 45 minutes, and there'll be a recording of the program that we'll post on our website next week that you can refer back to if you have to leave early. We understand that sometimes something might come up or you might need to take a break. It's all good. Please do what's best for you and your family. If you have any questions throughout the program, use the Q and A function that you'll find either at the bottom or the top of your screen. I see that lots of you have already found it because you told us your age and where you're living, so awesome. Please use that to communicate with us back and forth through the program.
I apologize because we usually have closed captioning for our programs. And today, unfortunately we don't have that feature, but it will be back for our future programs. And then last but not least, we have an awesome team behind the scenes that are here to help with the Q and A, and just to help make sure everything flows the way it's supposed to go. We have today Christian, Maggy, Juan Pablo, and Odalys. If you guys wouldn't mind turning on your camera so we can say hello.
Speaker 4:
Hi.
Odalys:
Hello.
Katie:
Thank you so much for helping behind the scenes. All right, so while our museum is closed, we're broadcasting from our home. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm in my home in Alexandria, Virginia.
Gale:
And I'm in my apartment in Washington, D.C. And so for those of you that didn't have a chance to tell us who you are and where you're joining us from, can you go ahead and warm up your Q and A and tell us where you're joining us from and how old you are?
Katie:
All right.
Gale:
All right, it looks like we already heard from a couple of our friends. Maybe that's all we have, yeah.
Katie:
Sounds great.
Gale:
It's really exciting. Yeah, it's really exciting to see all of the people joining in, not just locally, but from afar. Go ahead Katie.
Katie:
Hello in India. Hello from India. Welcome to the program.
Gale:
We have people from Indiana, Chicago, California.
Katie:
Maryland.
Gale:
I'm impressed with the people from California that joined us, even though the time zones. So thank you guys for joining us. We're so excited from North Carolina, from Maryland. Yeah. All right, so good.
Katie:
All right. Hello again and welcome to those who just joined us and thank you for sharing. My name is Katie and this is my colleague Gale. And we're excited to welcome you to today's program. I know a lot of you have started school this year already, and so we are super excited that you're happy to have chosen your Saturday morning to come and spend with us. And we hope your school year has gotten off to a great start.
Gale:
And as Katie mentioned earlier, we're going to be talking about habitats. And so just to go over what that is, a habitat is a place where in nature that an animal calls home. So a habitat could be a pond, it could be a rain forest, it could actually even be your backyard. Habitats are really important because it provides all the things that an animal needs to survive. And so to help us learn about habitats and animals, we are going to welcome now that special guest expert that we keep mentioning, Ingrid Rochon. Like I said, she is from the National Museum of Natural History. She works in the Mammals division and we're so happy that she can join us today. Hi Ingrid.
Ingrid:
Hi Katie. Hi Gale. I'm so excited to be here. So I'm also talking to you from my home today in Washington, D.C. I work as a museum technician behind the scenes in our mammals department. And my job is to take care of our specimens, all 600,000 of them, of our skulls. So I have a little 3D print of our skeletons, which are the bones inside your body. And for mammals, even things like our skins.
Gale:
Ooh.
Ingrid:
I'm basically a librarian for skeletons. But like your librarian at your local library, I do a lot more than just organize things. My job is to help scientists learn about mammals every time they visit our museum and use our collection by researching information about animals and their habitats. So we use things like books and maps and especially specimens with our own observations to find animals that live on top of mountains, or in deserts, or in our own backyard. My favorite animal lives right outside my window. It's a very shy creature called a short-tailed shrew. I think Katie and Gale have a picture to show you.
Gale:
Yeah, and I'm so happy that we have this picture because I didn't know what a short-tailed shrew looked like and I had no idea that it could live in the Washington, D.C., area; so that's really cool.
Katie:
I had no idea either. Thank you for telling us all about him.
Ingrid:
So these are about the size of a mouse. They're tiny little hunters, and my backyard is actually a perfect habitat for the shrew. It has everything it needs to live. It has insects and worms in my garden that it can eat. There's water from a creek nearby where it can take a drink. There's lots of fallen leaves and soft soil in my garden beds where it can make a little shelter or little house for itself. And there's plenty of space for it to run around and meet other shrews. In fact, all animals need at least four things to survive. They need food, they need water, they need shelter, and they need space to live and to raise their babies. They have to find everything they need to survive in their habitat. And different types of habitats have different ways of providing for those needs. Animals that are best adapted to their habitat can find what they need to survive and they'll have the best chance to survive.
Katie:
That's interesting. Thanks for sharing, Ingrid. So what you just said is that habitats are important to animals because they provide everything that they need to survive. But what if I don't know about the habitat that I can find an animal, if I don't know about an animal's habitat? Can I learn about the habitat by studying or looking more closely at the animal?
Ingrid:
Absolutely. So animals have all sorts of adaptive traits that help them live in a particular habitat. An adaptive trait is a body part like your hand or your eye, or a way of acting that helps them get the things they need to survive. In the museum we look a lot at different kinds of animal body parts. Skulls can tell us all about what an animal eats because we can look at the teeth, or other parts of the skull, a skeleton can tell us about how an animal moves, runs, or climbs, or swims in its habitat. And outside parts like fur give us all sorts of clues too. We have all of these types of objects in our collection and on our exhibit where you can come see them.
Gale:
That is so cool. And yeah, I've seen a lot of those collections objects and hopefully our friends at home will eventually get to see them too when the museum opens. But one thing that you are going to do with us, Ingrid, is show us some of those museum objects and what we can learn from them. And so viewers, you are going to be like Ingrid, and you're going to look closely at a particular animal to see how much we can learn and observe about where and how it lives. And remember, we're going to create that mini-habitat for this animal. So Katie's going to be actually taking notes to help us organize our thoughts, and all the things that we're going to learn from Ingrid. So Ingrid, let's reveal what animal will we be studying today?
Ingrid:
I think we have a picture of it. So this is a mammal called the platypus, which I think some of you might know from the cartoons. It's a very strange looking animal from Australia. And it's so strange that people used to think it was made up like a dragon or a unicorn. They didn't believe it when they heard stories about it. But it is a real animal. Does it remind you of any other animals you have seen? It reminds me of a few things. So let's make some observations about it. To make observations scientists use our senses so we can use our eyes to say what colors or shapes or body parts we see on this platypus. We can even imagine what it might be like to touch it. Does it look soft? Does it look rough to the touch? Take a minute to look closely at this picture with your family and make some observations with your senses and share them with us in the Q and A. I want to see what you guys can come up with.
Gale:
Yeah, I really love how you describe that, Ingrid, about how scientists use their senses because that's something that we do every day, right?
Ingrid:
Yes.
Gale:
Yeah.
Ingrid:
That's how we learn about the world around us.
Gale:
And I have to just say, Alandra said that it's Perry the Platypus. So a shout out to the pop culture platypus that is in the Phineas and Ferb cartoons. I watch that too.
Katie:
Gale, may I share my fun fact.
Gale:
Yes Katie, go ahead.
Katie:
The fun fact is that my dog is actually named Perry after Perry the Platypus. I was a classroom teacher and my students named him that they thought that he was the coolest character ever. And yep, Perry the Platypus is my dog, so yeah.
Gale:
Love it. All right. So James from California says that the platypus reminds his family of a seal because of its flippers and of a duck because of its bill.
Ingrid:
That is very good. So the bill is a very important thing for us to look at. The bill is its mouth, and I want to look a little bit more closely at that if you can show me a picture.
Gale:
Yeah.
Ingrid:
Wow, okay. So this is a close up of what the mouth looks like and the mouth is going to give us some really important clues about the habitat, because the mouth is how it gets its food. When I look at this, I see all sorts of interesting things and you guys, if you see any interesting things, share them in the Q and A of course. So I'm going to draw on this. Oh, I don't see how I can. Well, that's alright because we can use our eyes.
Gale:
Yeah, maybe I can try to do it while you are talking.
Ingrid:
Yeah, definitely. So one of the first things I notice is the nostrils on top of its bill. So there's the two little holes right on top, and those are the holes of its nose. And somebody mentioned seals, and seals also make me think of whales. So nostrils on top of the head make me think of whales and dolphins that need noses on the top of their head to breathe in water, so they can come up and take a really quick breath and then go back under.
I see these ridges on the side of the bill, they look kind of like a little accordion. And I know actually from looking at bills of ducks too, that a lot of animals use these to catch food when they suck in water. So they suck water into their mouth and little pieces of food can get caught in the ridges. And then finally I'm looking at it and I'm imagining what it would be like to touch it. And it actually kind of looks like velvet or soft fabric. And I know because I've been up close with specimens that the bill is very soft and rubbery and it contains a lot of touch receptors. So it feels just like the soft skin of your fingertip. And it's very good at feeling around maybe in a place that doesn't have a lot of light.
And then maybe my most important observation is what I don't see. I don't see any teeth in here.
Gale:
Yeah, I thought that was interesting. And actually Jess, one of the viewers was asking the ridges, is it similar to whale teeth?
Ingrid:
It actually is. So whales have baleen that they use, they're plates in their mouth made out of the same stuff as the platypus bill. So the stuff that your hair and your fingernails are made out of, and they use it to strain krill and shrimp. And so the platypus is using it for the same purpose, but to catch smaller food items because the platypus is a lot smaller than a whale.
Gale:
Awesome. Are there other collections objects that we could look at to learn more about the platypus?
Ingrid:
Yeah, I think we have a picture of the skull to look at. So scientists can learn a lot about an animal by looking at the skull.
A skull is a protective sort of suitcase for many important things, our eyes for seeing, and our ears for hearing, and our mouth for eating. So when we look at this skull, we don't see any teeth, but we do see these sort of pads in the back of the jaw.
Now platypuses don't need to chew and they don't need to grab things with big canine teeth like your dog or your cat might have. They are used for crushing. So they'll hunt something like an invertebrate, like a shrimp would be a good food item or a dragonfly larva or some sort of bug that lives underwater. And because the bug or the crawfish has a hard outer skeleton, it needs to crush it and then suck it in.
And I can also see where the eyes would be. The eyes are very small, so it's using, it doesn't need to use its eyesight to hunt in a field or in a forest. It's using that bill that's very soft and good at touching things to feel for its food. So I know now that they have a bill that's good at touching and they have teeth that are good for crushing invertebrates. So their habitat needs invertebrates for them to eat. And it probably also needs water, which is where I would find something like a shrimp.
Katie:
So Ingrid, can I go ahead and take a couple notes for us?
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Katie:
So you're saying the platypus eats food on the bottom of a river or a stream?
Ingrid:
Yes.
Katie:
Okay, so that tells me that there's probably some water, like a river or a stream, right?
Ingrid:
Yes.
Katie:
They need a river or a stream. And its food you're saying is like a bug in the water.
Ingrid:
Yeah. Something like a shrimp, or maybe a caddisfly, or a baby dragonfly that still lives underwater. Yeah.
Katie:
All right, all right. Thank you so much.
Gale:
Ingrid, we actually have a question from our viewer, Megan, do platypuses make sounds?
Ingrid:
They do make sounds, but they're usually the only sort of sound that people have heard them making is a growl when you disturb them. So if you pull on your cat's tail, which you should never do, they'll make a sound that they're like, hmm, no, don't do that. And a platypus will go [growl sound]. But mostly they communicate with each other through touch.
Gale:
Oh, okay. That's right. So that touch is really, really important. And then Pierce was saying that the bill does look a lot like a duck.
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Gale:
Great observation.
Ingrid:
Now I think some people may have noticed, and I definitely noticed that it had webbed feet like a seal. Why don't we take a closer look at the feet.
Gale:
All right. Whoa. That looks like there are two feet on top of each other.
Ingrid:
Yeah, it does look like it has two different feet. And we can sort of guess from that observation that maybe these feet have two different jobs to do. So webbed feet are perfect for swimming, just like a seal would have or a whale or a scuba diver would put on their feet to swim. And since we know it needs to eat things underwater, it needs to swim to get to them.
But we still haven't answered the question about what it does for shelter. So I'm looking at this foot and I see the claws on top. And a foot like this has claws on the front so the webbing can fold back and I think it would be a really good foot for digging or walking around on land. I know that looking at skeletons can give us a lot of clues about how an animal moves. So maybe if we look at the skeleton, it will give us some more clues.
Gale:
Great. Look at the skeleton then.
Ingrid:
Wow. Okay.
So here's our skeleton. You can see the skull on the front of the body, that's where the head is. And you can see three out of his four arms and legs and his tail. Now when I'm looking at this, I see that it has really strong arms for digging. So I'm looking at the humerus bone. And the humerus bone is the bone of your upper arms. So when you do your Rosie the Riveter pose and you see your strong muscle, that's that's where your humerus bone is. And a lot of animals that dig have really short and really thick humerus bones that allow the back muscles a lot of room to attach. And they're very strong when they're digging so they don't break or bend.
Another thing that I see, because I look at so many skeletons, is something a little bit that sticks out on the ulna. The radius and the ulna are the bones of your forearm right here. And this little sticky out bit is called the olecranon process, which is a really long word, but you can just think of it as the sticky out bit. That provides more leverage because the arm works like a lever. So it gets lots of strength when it's digging. And I also see its long tail, but with such strong arms, the platypus doesn't need the tail to swim like an otter would or a seal would. It just uses it to help it sort of steer around in the water and also to store fat for hard times. So our observations suggest that this animal is a good burrower, and in fact it makes burrows for shelter. So it digs resting burrows where it can take a little nap during the day. And it also digs nesting burrows where it can keep its babies and keep them safe.
Katie:
All right. So I'm going to add some more notes for us. Is that okay Ingrid?
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Katie:
We know that the habitat, like you just said, has to provide shelter for my platypus or for any animal. And for the platypus, the type of shelter that the habitat needs to provide the materials or items or the nature parts for it to build it are maybe dirt or what does it dig in to build its burrows?
Ingrid:
I think a good place to dig would probably be a river bank.
Katie:
Okay.
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Katie:
So I'm going to say like river bank and burrow. So I know when I build my habitat, I need probably some type of river bank to put my burrow. And that tells me a lot about the space too. You've mentioned a lot about swimming and you mentioned land. So the platypus, I'm thinking in it's habitat needs to have it, I mean, it's swimming a lot, right? It has special feet just to swim, and it finds its food at the bottom of the rivers. So I'm going to say for space, we definitely again need that water, that river or stream like we had up here, but also we just need land for him to build his burrows and the nests. Alright. Thank you so much.
Gale:
And Katie and Ingrid, before we move on, I just wanted to highlight that our friends at home are getting a really cool behind the scenes look at the museum collection today. So Ingrid, thank you for helping us look at these collections and see what kind of really cool things that we could find from them. And I think it's especially interesting that skeletons, looking at skeletons and all of these different parts can help us figure out how it moves.
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Gale:
That's awesome.
Katie:
All right. So to recap, the platypus super-unique animal. All right, really cool. We have learned a lot about this platypus. So we learned what it eats, where it eats too, that it swims, and the burrows -- the two different types, you said it has the sleeping or the resting burrow and then the burrow for the nests. That's so cool. Now, I've never seen one of these in my backyard and I think I remember you said it was, it's gone someplace different. Can we learn a little bit about where this animal lives? Exactly?
Ingrid:
Yeah. So part of my job is to help scientists use maps to find animal habitats. And I think we have a map of the world where we might find this animal. So the platypus lives in Australia and the island of Tasmania. So a lot of my job involves geo-referencing, and that's just a fancy name for studying old place names that we might find on our specimens and figuring out where in the world those specimens came from, so we can put the dot right on the map. We know that our platypuses in our collection are all from Australia, and we have a picture of the Goulburn River, which is where some of our platypuses come from and where a lot of people have seen platypuses in the past. So in this habitat, I see all the things we need. I see a river which gives it water, and a place to swim.
And I also can see the bottom of the river. I know it's not too deep, so the platypus doesn't have to dive really far. It can just take a quick little breath and go down and get a little food item and come back up. I see lots of trees and plants on the river bank and I see that there's plenty of space for lots of platypuses to live in. Where there's a lot of space, a lot of platypuses can find food and water and shelter, and then they can live there together because an important part of your habitat is being able to live there with other members of your own species.
Katie:
Awesome. All right. So we're going to review one more time just to make sure we have all the information we need for our habitat creation. So with the food and water, you said that there's the river, so we know that we can find the insects that might be in the water, or the larvae and the shrimp. All right, so we're good. And water definitely, we have the river and the stream. I can see it right there.
Ingrid:
Yeah. So there's lots of fresh water for drinking. The water isn't too deep, and it's not too fast, so it's not going to sweep our platypus away. It's too small to live in the ocean.
Katie:
And then for the shelter, you were saying it's probably a good idea to have a river bank so that they can build burrows.
Ingrid:
Yes. And it's important to have lots of trees and plants on the river bank so that they can send roots down into the dirt and sort of help stabilize the dirt while the platypus digs.
Katie:
Awesome. And then the last one is space. And I see lots of it here. We've got our land where he can build the nests and the river for swimming and for catching food.
Ingrid:
Yeah, we've got everything they need. They have plenty of space to meet other platypuses and for their babies to live and grow. We know that in a place like this, you can find more than a hundred platypuses along only a couple miles of river. So this sounds like the perfect habitat.
Katie:
All right, awesome. So we've learned lots about the habitat or lots about this platypus's specific needs, and we've figured out how the habitat can provide for those needs. Ingrid, thank you so much for helping us make these observations and for helping us learn all about the platypus.
Ingrid:
Oh, thank you.
Gale:
Yes. And we're going to use this information to make our craft. So it is craft time.
Katie:
Woo.
Gale:
Remember, we want our platypus to be safe and healthy. And so we need to include all of these things that are necessary to keep the platypus safe and healthy and meet its basic needs.
So Katie has just shared her screen with us to show the materials that we need. And to start off, we are going to show you how to make a simple model container. And you're going to be able to follow along with us. And this model is going to be really important because it gives us, it lets know about how much space we need to create for our platypus habitat. And then after the program, if you decide to use this as like a plan and you want to make something bigger, that's totally fine. Oh, yes. And Ingrid is showing us her a little habitat too, her mini-habitat. I know that when I made this, I decided I didn't really like it and I was going to use it as a rough draft. And so that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to make one later, but so you can decide to do that if you want to. So go ahead, Katie, why don't you go and start, take us through the steps.
Katie:
All right, the first thing you need is you need that thicker piece of paper, the card stock paper, a ruler, pencil, and scissors. So what we want to do is we want to make a square, and a square is a shape that has four sides and all the sides have to be the same length. So how we're going to do this is we're going to see what the length of our shorter side is. I'm going to use my ruler to measure out that. And mine is a normal size of piece of paper. It's about eight and a half inches. So I'm going to use my ruler to figure out my length or the shorter sides is about eight and a half inches. So what I need to do is I need to measure on the longer side, eight and a half inches. To do that, I'm going to use my ruler and then I'm going to make a little mark so I know where that is on my paper.
Gale:
All right. And you can see Ingrid has already measured hers out.
Katie:
Awesome. Once you have your mark on your paper to see where the other short line needs to be, you can use your scissors, cut off the extra piece. I'm going to use my scissors here to cut off where I measured it out. And then you have approximately a perfect little square. All right, awesome. Close to right.
Okay, the next thing we need to do is we need to make each of the four quadrants in order to have our sides. So a quadrant is there's going to be four squares inside this square. And so you do that, we're going to fold. First we're going to fold one side to the other side. Crease it really nice and then open it back up. Now I have two rectangles, or my paper is folded in two halves. Now with it unfolded, we're going to take the top and go down to the bottom. Now we have fourths. Once you open it back up, take your pencil and you're going to pick, actually, before we do that, we're going to cut. Take your scissors, and what we're going to do is we're going to cut one line. You can pick any of the fold creases, just one of them. And you get a stop right in the middle. So I'm going to take my scissors and I'm going to cut all the way up and then stop right in the middle. So it's kind of like your paper has two walking legs.
Gale:
And I don't have scissors, so I just tore mine really carefully.
Katie:
Sounds good.
Gale:
My walking legs.
Katie:
Yep. There we go. So make your paper walk a little bit. Now with your pencil or marker or whatever writing utensil you have on one of the legs, you're going to draw an X, kind of like Ingrid's got there. That's going to tell us that we are not going to do any art on that. None of our part of our habitat is going to go on that X. And the reason why it's not going to go on that is because that's going to be our base and you're not going to see it. So here's where you can construct the box. If you want to construct the box and tape or staple it and then draw on it, kind of like how we've got ours already made, you can, or you can just see how it will look once it's folded and then you can unfold it and draw flatly on here. You're the artist, you can whatever is best for you and your family and your habitat. But I want to show you how to do that first.
So what you're going to do is you're going to take the one with the X and you're going to make it walk behind the other leg, and then you're going to kind of bend at the middle to let these overlap. So my X, I'm kind of bending it and it's going behind the other leg. And this is our habitat container.
We've got our base and then we've got two walls here. If you want to go ahead and secure it, you can use tape along the edges or you can use a stapler. You can use glue If you've got glue, uh oh I'm a little blurry. There we go. You can use glue if you've got glue, but it might take a little bit of time to dry. You don't have to secure it though if you don't want to. Cause we've got that X. So that tells me I'm not going to draw on that. I'm going to go ahead and secure mine so that I can draw right on it.
All right, once you've got your container created, it's time to put the elements of the habitat into our creation that the platypus will need. Now together, we're not going to make the platypus, but we are going to just make the habitat together. And then afterward you can maybe make your happy platypus.
Gale:
And Katie, one of our viewers, Jesse George, they asked the question, where would a platypus most like to live? And so I'm so happy to hear that our viewers are thinking about this, and questioning in that. And so that's just a really great question and we're going to cover that right now.
Katie:
All right, first, so when we were learning with Ingrid, we learned that there are the four basic needs that the habitat has to provide for the animal. It needs space, water, shelter, and food.
First thing we're going to focus on is space. So I'm thinking to myself, how might my habitat provide space for my platypus, or what type of space does the platypus need in order to be the most successful and to survive? On my board here, when we were learning, I wrote river and land. So on my habitat, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go ahead and draw, or if you've got extra paper and you want to draw on that and then later cut it out and paste it in. Totally cool. Again, you're the artist, we can't wait to see how these turn out. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to draw water because I know that the platypus likes to swim. So going to on my base, I'm going to draw, I'm going to color it blue because he is going to have lots of space to swim and move around.
So I know it needs water and I know it needs some kind of land. And Ingrid was telling us before, it likes the river bank in order to dig and build its burrows. So I'm going to draw my river bank and I'm going to use brown for that and it's going to just kind of go above my river.
Gale:
So Katie, we're drawing the parts of the habitat, right?
Katie:
Yes. We're drawing the parts of the habitat that will provide the space for my platypus. Ingrid, what are you adding to yours for space?
Ingrid:
So I'm starting to draw and I added some blue for the river. I am starting to draw the trees, so I'm adding green leaves and trees on top of my river. And I drew in a river bank where I can put a little burrow. And I did the burrow in a cross section, like you cut it in half so you can see inside.
Katie:
Oh that's so cool. Awesome.
Gale:
Yeah, that's great.
Ingrid:
I'm coloring along with you.
Katie:
I love it. That kind of leads us to the next one. Let's talk about shelter. So I know it needs to provide space. We've got our land, we've got our water. Ingrid was drawing some trees right. But now what about shelter? Ingrid, you gave us an example or a hint as to what that might be. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're building for shelter on yours?
Ingrid:
Yes. So I'm going to color it in brown when I get my brown. So this is the river bank. The blue is the blue, the water with some little fish in it, to show it's water. And then I drew the banks of the river and this is a little hole, so this is the hole that the platypus dug to make a little resting burrow, where it rests and takes a little nap. And then I drew a bigger burrow over here and this is the nesting burrow. So this is where the mama platypus would bring her babies so that they could be safe.
Katie:
Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Yeah I went ahead and drew a little burrow on my riverbank too. I did it in black so that it was a little bit darker so that it would pop out.
Gale:
And I'm having a little bit of trouble with the 3D, so I'm just drawing mine on my flat piece of paper and then in the end I'm going to just fold it over.
Katie:
Awesome.
Gale:
You at home can do that as well.
Katie:
So we've got space and shelter. Let's do water and food next. So water, we kind of talked about it a little bit. Ingrid was saying we can have our stream and our river for, the shallow river and water so it can hunt and find its food, but also so it can swim and also so that it can drink it. So we've got our water, You might already have water in your habitat and if so, you can add some details to it or you can go ahead and start adding the food in. I'm going to go ahead and start adding some food in. I'm going to draw some little black polka dots in my water to be the insects that it's going to eat.
Gale:
All right. How are viewers and friends doing at home? Let us know in the chat how you're doing. I also see that there's some really great questions that people are asking. I actually wanted to ask one of them that is a little bit related to what we're talking about. Gary wants to know, does its burrowing habits attribute to its wide stance? I remember when we're looking at the skeleton and it had those arms going out a little bit?
Ingrid:
That's definitely part of it. Because a lot of, when you think about a mole, moles look, I actually have a mole I can show you. But moles, moles have their arms to the side like this because it's most efficient for them to have their arms sort to the side to move things out of their way. And that contributes to a wide stance. The platypus is also an interesting mammal, in that it's, some people might call it a living fossil. It's one of the oldest mammals that we know of. It sort of split off from the mammal family tree earlier than any other mammal. So you're more, your dog or your cat is a closer cousin to you than the platypus is. It's more distantly related to you and it has a lot of extra bones and sort of a wider stance that animals called monotremes have. So the platypus is the only mammal that lays, that still lays eggs and it's related to the echidnas, which is another weird Australian animal that lays eggs and also sort of has that wide stance. And they both look like that because they're related to each other.
Gale:
Cool. Awesome.
Katie:
Can I ask a quick question too that someone brought up as well?
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Katie:
One of our friends has a great question about holding its breath. Or did you answer this.
Gale:
Oh, I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to go ahead and ask that. Yeah, cause I was interested about that one too, yeah.
Katie:
You're saying that it's shallow, but it has to, I know it has to go down to the bottom, to find the food, so even it's shallow, the water, how long can it hold its breath for?
Ingrid:
It can't hold its breath as nearly as long as a whale or a seal. They only hold their breath for a little less than a minute at a time. So they go down and they take a very quick dive and search around the bottom with their bill feeling around, and then they come right back up for a quick breath and their nostrils are on the top so that they can come up and go right back down and they don't have to stay up at the top too long.
Katie:
Right. So when we're thinking about our habitat, my water should be kind of shallow, like you had mentioned in the picture. I can see the bottom, so I know this water is shallow.
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Katie:
That's so cool. Thank you. Awesome.
Gale:
All right. Where are we with our habitat making? Are we done with our four?
Katie:
We have, yeah. So I've got water, I've got space for it to have the nest so it can move around so that it can raise its baby safely. I've got food, I've got water, space, food, and shelter, like I said to raise this baby. Love it, awesome. Ingrid, thank you again so much.
Gale:
I know. And we actually have two more questions from the viewers. We want to take advantage of having you here.
Ingrid:
Yeah.
Gale:
So our friend from India is asking is the platypus diurnal because it has small eyes?
Ingrid:
The platypus is nocturnal.
Gale:
Oh, all right.
Ingrid:
Yeah. So they mostly come out at night.
Gale:
Okay, great. So they come out at night. Okay. And then there was one more question or maybe we already had answered it.
Katie:
Someone was wanting to see the habitat again, so I'm going to go ahead and share the screen while you're doing that question just so they can see the habitat.
Gale:
Yeah. Okay. Patrick wants to know, does a platypus have a sixth sense?
Ingrid:
It does. It does. So I talked about the touch receptors on the bill, and those are a lot like the touch receptors in your fingertip. You guys know a lot about the platypus, don't you?
Gale:
Oh, interesting.
Ingrid:
Because they have, their sixth sense is that they have a different type of receptor on the bill called an electro-receptor. And the other animals that you might think of that have this are sharks or fish. So they have cells in their bill that sense the electrical fields given off by the muscle movements of their prey. So basically when a little shrimp or something is moving around on the bottom, each movement of its muscles is controlled by a nervous impulse, an electrical impulse. And their sixth sense is that they can sense that electrical impulse. And with that, using a combination of touch and electro-sense, they can pinpoint exactly where their prey is, even when it's dark and even if it's at the bottom of a stream.
Gale:
That is so awesome.
Katie:
The platypus really is an incredible animal, Ingrid. Now I've got the habitat up again. One more time, if you want to use it to compare with your habitat that you are creating. Making sure you've got all of the parts that we've needed for the habitat in order for this, your platypus to survive.
Gale:
And then, so hopefully you'll take some time to finish your mini-habitat. Like I said, I made a rough draft and I'm going to do mine again. And then we always love to see your creations and so if you want to, please take a photo of it and send it to us.
Also, if you want to take it a step further, you can make your own little platypus model. You can see Katie did one out of paper. I made one out of clay that's going to live in my habitat. So yeah, so if you want to take it one step further, since we learned so many amazing things about this incredible animal, you can go ahead and channel those really cool findings into your own platypus model.
Okay friends, our time is up today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your patience at the beginning. We're really excited to bring you all these family programs once a month. So we hope to see you next month and we hope that you enjoyed learning about the platypus by making observations and using these observations to learn more about its habitat. Special thank you to Ingrid for sharing her knowledge with us about the platypus and sharing how we can use collections objects to learn more about these animals.
Katie:
Yes, thank you Ingrid so much.
Ingrid:
Thanks for inviting me.
Katie:
And while you're in your backyard playing, or if you're in the neighborhood or the park, take a look around you and think about how the animals that might live in those areas call that habitat their home, and the needs of those animals, and how that habitat serves as a safe and healthy home for those animals.
Caregivers there will be a short survey for you to fill out after our program has ended. And please fill it out because we're so excited to hear your feedback as we're continuing to build our online programming. Thank you again so much for joining us and we hope to see you online again in the future.
Gale:
Bye everyone.
Katie:
Bye.
Ingrid:
Bye.
Gale:
Have a good rest of the weekend.
